blah...blah...blah... Ginger!

Chilly winds don’t blow

Jonna — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:17:17 +0000

rainy garden

Sitting on the terrace, watching rain pour down, lightening flash and listening to Nina Simone. An hour ago I was swimming, laying in the sun and gardening in 90˚+ temps. Now, it is a cool 84˚ with the breeze from the rain bringing the smell of green and damp. It has been cooler lately, I think that fall is coming and with it the path into the western Caribbean is open to hurricanes. They are out there now, no idea yet if they will come this way but we are watching.

Also approaching is norte #1 bringing cooler and drier weather from the north. I find it amazing that #1 is here in August. Last year we got up to 40 or more by the end of the season, I missed #1 last year and perhaps this is why, it was so early I wasn’t paying attention.

I’m not ready for the heat to leave, I really am enjoying it. I don’t think I have to break out the flannels yet but there is a change in the air. So, for those of you who think we don’t have seasons down here because it never freezes and snows, it’s not true. The signs are there and you learn to feel them, more subtle than in the north and without the awful dread I used to feel as summer ended. Not that I ever lived where it snowed, I’m a weather wimp from California. Still, it got cold and dark and depressing in NoCal in the winter. I hated it. I don’t dread winter now, it’s cooler and can get cold at night but the sun shines and it isn’t dark at 4pm. It’s well worth giving up those long summer twilights to have more sun in the winter. I looked up our hours of sun and we go from a low of 11 hours in mid winter to a high of 13 hours in mid summer. I like those numbers, keeps me cheerful all year.

This is an Elkhorn fern that I got from a friend’s moving sale. I replanted it today. I broke off a small part to put under the bamboo, I want to see how it does in the ground. Looks kind of like it would make a good salad doesn’t it? I’m thankful to my friend Joyce on a garden forum for identifying it for me. It can live in soil or on a tree but can’t take a frost, adaptable and cold phobic… like me.

Polypodium polycarpon 'Grandiceps'

views from the pool

Jonna — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 17:17:51 +0000

bananas and heliconias

Claritan is a wonderful thing, I’m feeling much better when I take one in the morning. I still go down first thing and dive in the pool and then float and look at my garden, it’s as good as the coffee that follows. I got out and got the camera this morning and carefully took some pictures of my morning view.

I think I got the heliconia mixed up when I was planting them and put the taller ones here in the middle. I’m not unhappy with the effect though, so they can stay unless they get really tall. I love all the green and they have really accomplished my goal of separating the terrace and the yard with greenery. I think it makes my small yard look a little larger if you can’t see straight to the back wall.

Continuing the view from the pool, my neighbor’s huge Royal Palm towers over everything. Henry dropped the wall just to frame it. It blooms almost non-stop and I find babies all over. I have to pull them out, a palm that size would eat my whole yard.

a good name for such a regal tree

These are the smaller heliconia that were meant for the front, along with several types of ginger.

can you spot Raui?

I’m so happy with the bamboo. It started with 3 or 4 sticks and it has become this. It now completely screens the hotel on the next street. There are 4 new culms growing that will make it even thicker. Our yard is now completely private. We were at a party last night and it was a warm night. When we got home I just stripped and jumped in the pool. Heavenly! I couldn’t do that without knowing that there is no way to see into our yard.

clumping timber bamboo

I’ve been getting out and about (or aboot as our Canadian friends say) the last couple days, it definitely was allergies that had me down. Amazing what a little pill can do. I even got up early and made it to the Chuburna flea market yesterday. My friend Paul goes every Sunday and I like to meet him and browse the stalls and then have breakfast. I told myself I could buy something that holds fruit but nothing else.

Instead, I bought this cool glass jar because I want to try making a terrarium. I got a deal by getting these two serving dishes along with it Plus, I got a red mandivilla vine for the wall and a king size comforter cover from a stall that sells hotel overstock. So much for my resolutions, nothing to hold fruit.

I believe it is hand blown, it's a little collapsed on one side

these are close to some plates I already have, you can see one of the set holding fruit

Luckily for the size of this post, I didn’t take the camera to the flea market or to the wonderful party last night. Stunning home, good friends, good food and lots of laughter. I love living here.

the doldrums

Jonna — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 19:09:29 +0000

It actually seems that it is a little cooler lately, but the humidity is still very high. My gauge on the cheap clock in the kitchen seems to be stuck at 98%. The weather thingy (which reports from the airport) shows it much lower but I believe my kitchen clock. It is harder to breathe, sometimes it feels like I am sucking water and should clear my mask. The floors and the walls are sweating. At night it feels almost cold, we’ve had to turn off the floor fan in the bedroom. If the temp drops and the humidity doesn’t, you feel cold and clammy.

Sometimes you just can't get off the ground

I’m sneezing all the time and my nose runs like a faucet when I get up. It sure didn’t take me long to develop allergies to whatever is blooming here. I thought perhaps I’d left that affliction in the north, but no. I forget that another symptom of allergy is being tired, being stupid, being a klutz. I thought my eyes were getting worse since they itch all the time and I seem to drop or knock over whatever I touch. Also, the headaches are not increasing the charming side of my personality.

So, I’ve been staying home a lot. When we were building this house our friends Diane and Betsy came down. We were climbing around and explaining where things would be when Diane looked at me and said “you’ll never leave the house”. This statement has haunted me since. Diane knows me very well, she knows I have latent hermit tendencies and she knows how much time I can spend putzing around my house and garden. She was there when the only thing that got me out off the property in San Anselmo was a trip to the nursery or the need to go to work. I keep that statement as a whip to get me out of the house, off on adventures, socializing… it just isn’t working very well lately.

I do have some Claritan that a friend brought down, my new resolution is to take one every morning and see if life doesn’t change for the better.

the pond at dusk

How to waste an hour watching your cats

Jonna — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:20:25 +0000

Bring stuff home from CostCo in a big box.

hot days and sultry nights

Jonna — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:35:56 +0000

beach off my deck

So, I’m sitting here in Akumal waiting for the day to start. I don’t know why I woke up so early but when this happens, I don’t know what to do with myself. I always assume that the world is closed for business before 10am so there’s no where to go. Perhaps that isn’t true but I don’t want to find that out this late in my life. I thought about going for a swim but it even seems too early for that.

I drove over Thursday night. I like driving late into the night, cool and quiet and less traffic. We’ve never paid much attention to the homily that you should never drive at night in Mexico. It can be dangerous on unfamiliar, rural roads but that’s due to animals in the road. There is something in dogs and cows that tells them to go and sleep on that nice, empty blacktop out in front. I feel nicely anonymous in my beat up Toyota truck with Quintana Roo plates. No one can see that it is a gringa driving until I stop. The military inspection guys are always surprised when they walk up to the door.

So I left Thursday at 11pm and zipped across the peninsula arriving in Akumal at 2am. I looked up a few times for the Perseid meteors but that’s not really a smart thing to do at 70 mph. I didn’t see any and when I got here I forgot. Maybe tonight, it’s nice and dark on the bay now because the turtles are nesting. We have a huge number of nests on this bay and more on the next bay over. That’s good, supposedly when there are a lot of turtle nests there won’t be a hurricane.

Mimi stayed in Mérida with 2 dogs and the cats and the fish and the plants and her sandbags. It is difficult to leave the house anymore due to all these things that need attention. I have to figure that out. Stuff that I enjoy when I’m at home can’t keep me from traveling, I’m not sure how to fix that.

I brought Chica with me because when I’ve come over here alone it seems really lonely. Chica is the best because I can just open the door and let her out and she goes about her business and then comes back, pretty quickly. No need to smell and pee on every bush in 5 miles like Hombre and not as energetic or frightening to others as Cuba. This is where she’s from, when we got to the arches she sat up and started sniffing the breeze. She knows home. She blends in here too. She looks like about half the dogs here and when people see her they usually know who she is. She’s a small town girl from a little beach town on the Caribbean.

It’s hot and muggy here too, very little breeze at night. I’m cocooned in the back bedroom which is dim and cool. I’ve got the AC on, the curtains closed and this is the only room that picks up the internet signal. Yesterday was one of those ‘everything is a hassle’ days. I didn’t pay attention to the gas gauge on the way over because the light is out in the dash. When I got up I went over to some friends a couple blocks away and was then going in to Playa when I happened to look at the gauge. I’m glad I did, it could have been a lot more of a hassle running out of gas on the highway. So, my lesson for the day is that just because it takes me a half a tank to get here in the jeep means nothing compared to the truck – especially when I have lead footed it over here with the AC on full blast. It was so far below empty my finger would fit between them. I came back to the house and the guys here found someone with a can of gas somewhere in town. They had to use a metal rod and a cut off water bottle to get it in the truck. All this in the sun and the heat. They did it though and off I went. It’s about 10km to the nearest gas station and that station is a big rip off so I hate going there. They got me enough gas that I could get all the way to Playa.

I’ve another day of running around to do, bills to pay and I need to get Rod to fix the AC in the other bedroom. I guess I can get started now, it’s almost double digits

some updates

Jonna — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 06:57:47 +0000

Stuck between a rock wall and bamboo

The Great Wall of Tita is a success! She has gone up her usual way several times but she can’t get beyond the spot where the bamboo fencing starts.

She’s trapped in the yard and we are very happy about it. We can now leave the doors open with only the screen and she can go in and out but not up. She’s safe and that means everything. A big plus is that the dogs don’t notice the feral cats walking behind the bamboo very often so they don’t race back there and bark as much. We also enjoy greater privacy in the yard and the pool, the growing bamboo plus the bamboo fence addition have blocked the view from the hotel on the block behind us.

Now, she spends a lot of time sitting and staring up at the wall. I think she is watching lizards or maybe feral cats or maybe she is plotting her newest escape attempt.

She saw something up there that I couldn't see

The bananas and ginger are growing well and I’m getting the line of sight separation I wanted from the terrace to the back of the yard. No blooms, but I have lots of growth.

lots of green

No pictures, but Mimi and I went to a lumber store that our friend Terrence recommended today. We bought (2) 2″x8″x3 meter boards of Zapote to support the roof pond. The guys at the lumber store were really nice and steered me to zapote as a cheaper hardwood, more durable outside and from Mexico and not imported. Turns out much of the hardwood here is actually imported from Peru. It grows here but it is protected, good for Mexico but sad for Peru. They delivered it, hauled it up to the roof and then lifted the pond up onto it. I did tip them $50 pesos each, total cost for both boards with tax, delivery and tip was $57.42us. I was able to really fill the pond, it is level and off the roof. We need to add some roof paint to the area that the kiddy pool used to be and we might put some on the outside of the pond tank as well. I’ve been checking the water temps and even with the level really low it has stayed under 90°F. This project is a success too!

Plus, I will leave you with one last crime photo. This upstanding young man used the weapon in the picture to break and enter a pawn shop. He made so much noise that the geriatric guard came and caught him. I am hooked on these daily crime stories in the Diario, this is the REAL crime in Mexico!*

*Not really true. There are major problems in this country I’ve come to love, it just isn’t here in Yucatán. While I despair that my Spanish is going nowhere, I realized the other night that I understand too much of the news to enjoy watching it. I stopped watching US news a while back for the same reason, it’s depressing. What is on the national news here is not all of it either, one of the real tragedies is the heavy intimidation of journalists. They are murdered at an alarming rate and obviously that has an effect on what is reported.

do you hide ponds? you’re an addict.

Jonna — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:45:28 +0000

I have a bit of an addiction to ponds, fish and water plants. I know I’ve posted pictures of the hall pond, the garden pond and maybe even the little Betta pond, but have I mentioned that I also have a big, ugly, plastic, kiddy pond on the roof? Yea, I do. It has plants and fish that I want to propagate or that I don’t have room for in the other ponds.

cute, eh?

I bought the kiddy pool over in Playa del Carmen one time when I saw it on sale in Soriana. I didn’t have any measurements from the roof with me and I just thought it would fit. Well, not so much. It ended up overlapping the concrete beams and kind of draping over the sides. Every morning I looked out there to see if it was still holding water, I was afraid that the combination of bad seating, full tropical sun, and windy downpours would collapse it. Plus, did I mention it was really ugly? I put a laundry basket, home made filter in it which added to the charm.

So, look what arrived day before yesterday.

Mimi measuring to see if it will fit through the roof door

Luckily, Mimi figured out it would fit through the roof door so they didn’t have to hoist it up from the street with ropes. That would have been a sight. Instead, they managed to haul it through the house, up the stairs, through our bedroom, past the laundry and onto the roof.

luckily, it's not really heavy

Gabi laughs as it comes through the bedroom

So, yesterday Mimi and I spent many hot hours, bent over with a net, in full sun on a white roof, catching teeny little Molly fry and moving them to the new pond. We both have a pretty good base tan but both of us have a bit of a sunburn today.

the Molly hunt

By the time we had walked around a bit and pulled out the plants, the gunk on the bottom of the plastic pond was pretty stirred up. It didn’t help us find the fish.

tiny fish in green muck

Mollies in their new home

So, now I have nice new pond on the roof. It has less surface area than the old one but it is deeper. It takes up a lot less room and isn’t as big an eyesore. We’re going to wash out the plastic pond and take it to Gabi’s house for the kids to cool off in. I’m afraid if it stays here, I’ll fill it with water again and add more plants.

tired

Jonna — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:33:12 +0000

I’m tired. I feel like I worked non-stop all weekend. Funny how when you are retired, you go out to dinner every night during the week and then stay home and work on the weekend.

It’s not like I worked at a job or anything, just keeping up with my own stuff. I cleaned 2 ponds and filters, washed about a ton of laundry, made a week’s worth of dog food, made cat food, made soup for the humans, unpacked 3 boxes, washed the contents, bought black foamy stuff to line the shelves of the new credenza, went back out and bought double sided tape to stick it down, lined those shelves and put all the stuff on them. I think there was more but it’s making me tired to list it all. Oh, well, we did go to a marvelous brunch at the monthly brunch restaurant Remixto.

Raui investigating

About those boxes… When Mimi and I went fulltime in our RV and sold our house in San Anselmo, we got rid of pretty much all our stuff. It was cathartic, sad, emotional, and when we drove away, ecstatic. The few things we did save filled about a dozen boxes and have been stored in California for 7 years. Mimi got them down here with friends last fall and I was happy to see my cookware again and some of the other stuff. Funny thing, almost all of it had something to do with eating or drinking. There were 3 boxes of assorted crystal that have stayed in the garage because I didn’t have anywhere to put them.

It’s good stuff but it is not a set. I’m not much for things matching anyway. The good stuff I inherited from my mother I mostly gave to my son. I’m not sure if he got the glassware, it’s possible my step father never sent most of it. I kept some rocks glasses that I remember my father having his nightly drink in when he got home from work. There are 3 of those left, very heavy, cut glass with a small gold rim. I use this stuff, so it breaks or chips or disappears. That’s ok. The rest is stuff that I’ve bought or been given over the years. I usually buy wine glasses in pairs, more is not always better I think.

all clean and on a lined shelf, mission complete

So, it was nostalgic to open these boxes after so many years. There was a set of 4 beautiful martini glasses and a silver topped shaker that Mimi gave me for my first birthday after we got together. There were the cut crystal wine glasses we bought in Ireland. The burgundy glasses from London. I had a good time washing them and looking at them again. In fact, I’m having a little red wine right now from a satisfyingly full shaped crystal burgundy glass that might have been my mothers. It feels good in the hand.

The hardest part of all of that was measuring and cutting the shelf liner and then getting the 2 sided tape on it and sticking it on the shelves. I don’t measure and cut very well, I don’t have the patience. I tried to persevere with this, it’s sort of even. The double sided tape really only wants to stick to me and itself. We fought, eventually I won. I’m more than a little pleased with myself for getting it finished.

I’m happy with the credenza, it moved a lot of stuff that is better being near the table out of the kitchen to the terrace/dining room. At some point, I’m going to look for a stone top for it. I’ve got the locations for a couple of stone warehouses here and it will be fun to go and browse. With a stone top, it can also function as a bar which will make having half of it full of bar glasses make more sense. I also have to get Mimi to cut a hole in the back of one section for the iPod and speaker cords, that will clear it off better.

I’m really trying to keep things clear, to not accumulate a ton of stuff that I rarely use, to not have so much around that you can’t really see any of it. I’m no minimalist but I appreciate the look more than I ever have.

pond proud

Jonna — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:31:13 +0000

Finally! The first bloom from a night blooming lily. I’ve had 2 other night blooming lilies but they both died, not sure why they just never grew much and then disappeared. This one was given to me by a local ponder Francisco and I am thrilled with the huge 6″ bloom.

almost ready to bloom

First the anticipation, I spotted the bud when it was just emerging and watched it for over a week as it got closer to the surface. Then, for 2 days it kept growing above the water. We almost missed the bloom because it didn’t open until late that first night, after 10pm. The next 2 nights though it opened after sunset and stayed open until 10 or 11 the next morning.

Isn’t it beautiful?

Three blooms open this morning, it was overcast and the nightbloomer stayed open until after the day bloomers had opened.

cooling rain

Jonna — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:50:06 +0000

The rains seem to be much more regular this year than last, almost every evening they arrive with the crash of thunder and flash of lightning. Last night the temps were at an incredible low of 25°C (77°F), it was chilly. I had to turn the hot water heater back on last week, the water was not warm enough from the tinaco. It felt great to take a really hot shower last night and then use our new hair dryer so I didn’t have wet hair. Who could imagine that I would want to blow heated air on my head in the middle of summer.

We haven’t had any flooding because they have been brief downpours or long slow rains, it’s long + downpour that makes everything flood. Of course, with every downpour the intersection by our house fills with water as the wells can’t drain it away as fast as it comes down. Another big “ah ha” moment was when it hit me that there are no sewers in the centro so all those grates on the street lead to are deep dry wells such as we have in our yard. If there is too much debris washed into them, they don’t drain very well. Theresa said they came and cleared out the wells on her street and it helped. We are one street over and I keep hoping they will come here next but no luck so far.

Mimi took some wonderful street shots the other night, lights on the waves and water at the corner. I liked this one best with part of an ambulance turning the corner.